Dragon Boat Festival by the Sea:

Zhunan’s River Offering and Harbor-Cleansing Mazu Rite

Joanna Wang　/　photos Kent Chuang

June 2026

中文

A scene from the Jijiang Xigang river offering and harbor-cleansing rite in Zhonggang, Zhunan. (photo by Chen Jinchuan)

When people think of Dragon Boat Festival, they usually picture dragon boat races, zongzi (rice dumplings with fillings normally wrapped in bamboo leaves), and the midday egg-balancing custom. But in Zhunan, Miaoli County, the festival also brings a major local observance with a history reaching back several centuries: Jijiang Xigang—literally, “offering to the river and cleansing the harbor.” A rare summertime Mazu procession in Taiwan (most are held in the third lunar month to mark the goddess’ birthday), it is more than a temple parade. With Mazu’s palanquin anchoring the ritual, multiple deities are led toward the shore to face the sea in a religious ceremony deeply bound up with the ocean.

The large whale that was stranded at the mouth of Zhonggang River in Zhunan in 1943 drew crowds of onlookers.

A report appeared in the Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō (Taiwan Daily News) on the fatal capsizing of a raft carrying Zhunan residents to have a look at the stranded whale.

Zhonggang and the Black Ditch

Organized by Zhonggang Cihyu Temple in Zhunan, Jijiang Xigang embodies a port town’s collective memory of living with the sea for centuries. Local cultural and history worker Lien Sen-yue notes that before the modern Port of Taichung (Zhonggang in Chinese) was built, the “Zhonggang” found in old records referred to a harbor town in what is now Zhunan. This was one of Miaoli’s earliest ports, linked across the Taiwan Strait with Quanzhou and used by early settlers as a landing point. Yet the Taiwan Strait—known historically to emigrants as the “Black Ditch”—was notoriously perilous. The sorrow left by so many maritime disasters made Jijiang Xigang an important spiritual refuge through which the community could steady and console itself.

A scene from the Jijiang Xigang river offering and harbor-cleansing rite in Zhonggang, Zhunan. (photo by Chen Jinchuan)

Combining faith and public health

Beyond offering spiritual comfort, early Jijiang Xigang events also functioned in practical terms as townwide public-health cleanups. Lien observes that before the rite began, residents would sweep the streets themselves. Following the founding of the procession, however, ritual “gold paper” mixed with medicinal herbs was burned along the route, with fire and smoke understood as forces of purification and disinfection. Around Dragon Boat Festival, summer heat traditionally brought heightened concern over infectious disease. If officials simply posted an order telling people to clean up, residents might not respond. But if the gods needed the community to drive out evil, people would take part voluntarily. “Sometimes the power of religious belief is more effective than administrative orders,” Lien says. Embedded in the rite is the practical wisdom with which earlier generations confronted epidemic diseases.

A scene from the Jijiang Xigang river offering and harbor-cleansing rite in Zhonggang, Zhunan. (photo by Chen Jinchuan)

Tragedies by the water

Jijiang Xigang grew into its present scale in connection with several historical disasters. The first was a Qing-era armed conflict between Hoklo and Hakka communities in the sixth year of the Daoguang reign (1826). The ethnic conflict spread from Changhua to Zhunan and escalated into a multi-sided clash. Zhonggang’s walled settlement was eventually breached by a combined assault by Hakka fighters from Nanzhuang and their Indigenous allies. As residents panicked and fled towards the West Gate, tramplings and drownings occurred at the narrow Sheliu Canal, with casualties said locally to have run into the hundreds. Local lore holds that in earlier times, children catching fish or playing in the canal would sometimes feel skulls left behind from the catastrophe.

The second was a tragedy in the 18th year of Japan’s Showa era (1943, when Taiwan was under Japanese rule), when residents went out to see a whale. After a massive whale was stranded off Zhonggang, curious villagers crowded onto a public ferry raft to take a look from the sea. This bamboo craft meant to carry only about 20 people was packed with roughly 60 despite the ferryman’s attempts to stop them. When it reached the middle of the harbor, wind and waves overturned it, claiming 32 lives and shocking the community.

Tragedies like these led the community to bring together rites that had once been held separately. Through Mazu and the deities’ procession around the harbor and offerings to the river, the new ritual has since been held to cleanse the waterways; guide toward the rest lonely wandering souls of those who died in conflicts, natural disasters, and accidents; and pray for peace in the community.

Zhonggang Cihyu Temple, Miaoli’s oldest Mazu temple, was designated a county-level historic site early on. Its abundant clay sculptures, stone carvings, and historical artifacts are treasured local cultural assets. (photo by Chen Jinchuan)

Zhonggang Cihyu Temple in Zhunan. (photo by Chen Jinchuan)

A solemn turn from the sea

Each year, the festival begins on the first day of the fifth lunar month, when the Five Camps—the guardian forces of the five directions—are installed and command flags are raised. On the day of Dragon Boat Festival itself, palanquins bearing various deities from other houses of worship gather at Cihyu Temple to receive Mazu’s decree. During the procession, paper talismans are posted about every 72 steps at intersections and bridgeheads, as if heavenly soldiers and generals are being stationed around the town to protect it. After reaching the seaside altar, the officiant and ritual masters pray toward the sea, make rice offerings, scatter talismans, and recite ritual writs, guiding lonely wandering souls out to sea and toward a place of rest.

The climax comes with the “withdrawal” rite. After the worship of deities’ statues is completed, these icons must be withdrawn toward the shore while facing the sea, symbolically keeping watch as the lonely souls depart. Meanwhile, everyone else must turn their backs to the sea. On the return journey, no one may look back, make a sound, or call another person’s name, lest the departing souls hear and follow the living back into town. This sense of mystery and taboo creates the quietest and most solemn moment of the entire festival.

This long-standing ritual was registered as intangible cultural heritage of Miaoli County in 2009. Although Zhonggang in Zhunan no longer functions as a harbor because of sedimentation, every Dragon Boat Festival, when palanquins once again pass through the streets and paper talismans burn in the sea breeze, the people of Zhunan continue to honor the sea with devotion, carrying forward a centuries-old memory of co-existing with the water.

Another century-old folk custom at Cihyu Temple is the Lantern Festival rite known as “Firecracker Bombing of Lord Handan.” According to cultural-historical research, the Lord Handan rite now popular in Taitung is said to have been transmitted there from Zhunan. (photo by Chen Jinchuan)